International Cat Day 2022: Google Has A Secret Cat Game To Celebrate The Day Of Felines, And Its Purr-fect

A great way to spook your sleeping kitty, just for the laughs!

Google celebrates International Cat Day with a hilarious game.

International Cat Day is being celebrated all over today. Established two decades ago by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, August 8 is celebrated to spread awareness on why cats — or any animal for that matter — should be protected from abuse. Google appears to have jumped on to the kitty bandwagon as well, as it added a fun interactive game that stays true to what cats truly are — adorable little messes! Read on to find out where to find the game, how to play, and what we think is the best (read: most hilarious) use for it.

To find the game, all you need to do is head to Google, and search “International Cat Day”. The search results page will show a rather innocent-looking paw icon just below the Google search bar. 

Click on it, and a giant kitty’s paw will appear on the screen, marked by a signatory loud “MEOW” and a dusty (virtual) paw print on your screen. Best part? No matter where you click on your screen now, all you will hear are more meows and even more dusty paw prints will fill up your screen soon!

To dust off the dusty prints, all you need to do is click on the ‘cross’ button on the bottom of the screen. There’s a fun little animation of the paw prints getting cleaned and it’s all aptly hilarious. 

Note that the ‘cross’ button will not appear until you have gathered more than one paw prints on your screen. Guess even Google doesn’t wish to clean up after its cattos, until its absolutely necessary.

Now for the fun part: what’s the use of Google’s cat game, apart from general amusement?

If you have a fur baby (that’s paw-rent speak for pets) nestled up on your lap, or on your bed, or at your feet, or even on your working desk, just turn up your device’s (mobile or laptop) volume and keep clicking on the ‘meow’ button in quick intervals. The sound is so real, your little pet will be up and sniffing around for a cat intruder in no time. This could make for a few hilarious Reels for your Instagram feed, at the very least.

At least, that’s what happened when I tried this trick on my cat. Just note that if you do it too repeatedly, your pet might get used to it soon enough, and go back to deep sleep as if nothing happened. That’s what my cat did after I went on a ‘meow-hitting’ spree for a few seconds. Once it figured out my ploy, it gave me a look of utter disgust and curled up at my feet again for another round of slumber. Cats could be a lot of things, but being dumb isn’t one of them!